In October, at a technology conference in Italy, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, predicted that millions of people will be living in space “in the next couple of decades.” He suggested this would happen “mostly” because they want to, noting that robots will likely be more cost-effective than humans for doing the actual work in space.
This caught my attention when, at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco weeks later, Will Bruey, the founder of Varda Space Industries, made a striking prediction. Instead of robots handling tasks as Bezos envisioned, Bruey claimed that within 15 to 20 years, it could be cheaper to send a “working-class human” to orbit for a month than to develop better machines.
In that moment, the tech-savvy audience didn’t seem shocked by such a provocative cost-saving statement. But it raised important questions for me—and surely for others—about who will actually work among the stars and under what conditions.
To delve into these questions, I spoke with Mary-Jane Rubenstein, the dean of social sciences and a professor of religion and science and technology studies at Wesleyan University. Rubenstein, who wrote Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse, has also recently been exploring the ethics surrounding space expansion.
Rubenstein’s take on Bruey’s prediction touches on a core issue: the power imbalance. “Workers already struggle on Earth to pay their bills and ensure their safety… and that dependence on employers only increases dramatically when you rely on them not just for a paycheck and healthcare, but also for basic needs like food and water—and even air,” she explained.
Her thoughts on space as a potential workplace were blunt. While it’s easy to romanticize space as a pristine frontier where people can float weightlessly, it’s crucial to remember that in space, there are no oceans, mountains, or cheerful birds. “It’s not nice up there,” Rubenstein stated. “It is not nice at all.”
Worker protections aren’t her only concern; there’s also the increasingly contentious issue of ownership in space. This legal gray area is becoming more concerning as commercial space operations accelerate.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty established that no country could claim sovereignty over celestial bodies. The moon, Mars, and asteroids are meant to belong to all of humanity. However, the U.S. passed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act in 2015, which states that while you can’t own a moon, you can own what you extract from it. This sparked excitement in Silicon Valley, even as nations around the world expressed concern.
Rubenstein offers a compelling analogy: “It’s like saying you can’t own a house, but you can own everything inside it.” She corrects herself, saying it’s worse: “It’s more like saying you can’t own the house, but you can take the floorboards and beams. The stuff in the moon is part of the moon. There’s no difference between the moon and what it contains.”
Companies have been preparing for this opportunity for a while now. AstroForge is eyeing asteroid mining, and Interlune wants to extract Helium-3 from the moon. The thing is, these aren’t renewable resources. “Once the U.S. takes the Helium-3, China can’t get it,” says Rubenstein. “And once China takes it, the U.S. can’t get it.”
International reactions to the 2015 act were swift. At the 2016 UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space meeting, Russia denounced the Act as a unilateral violation of international law, while Belgium raised concerns about global economic imbalances.
In response, the U.S. created the Artemis Accords in 2020—bilateral agreements with allied nations formalizing the American interpretation of space law, especially surrounding resource extraction. More than 60 countries have signed on, but notably, Russia and China are not among them.
Rubenstein argues that the situation reflects the U.S. setting rules and then inviting others to join or risk being excluded. The Accords don’t explicitly state that resource extraction is legal; they claim it doesn’t constitute the “national appropriation” that the Outer Space Treaty prohibits. It’s a careful dance around a complicated issue.
Her proposed solution, though unlikely, is to hand control back to the UN and COPUOS. If that doesn’t happen, she suggests repealing the Wolf Amendment—a 2011 law that bars NASA and other federal agencies from collaborating with China or Chinese-owned companies without specific FBI certification and Congressional approval.
When people tell Rubenstein that working with China is impossible, she has an interesting counterpoint: “We’re talking about an industry that claims things like, ‘It’ll totally be possible to house thousands in a space hotel,’ or ‘We’ll ship a million people to Mars, despite the lack of air and radioactive dangers.’ If we can envision those possibilities, then I believe it’s also possible for the U.S. to engage in talks with China.”
Rubenstein’s broader concern is about how we’re choosing to use space. She views current approaches—turning the moon into a “cosmic gas station,” mining asteroids, and establishing military capabilities in orbit—as radically misguided.
Science fiction offers various templates for imagining space, and she divides the genre into three broad categories. First, there’s the “conquest” genre, where stories serve the expansion of a nation-state or capital, treating space as a new frontier to conquer.
Next is dystopian sci-fi, which serves as a warning against destructive paths. Interestingly, she notes that some tech companies seem to miss the irony of this genre and end up actualizing the very warnings it presents.
The third category of speculative fiction uses futuristic settings to imagine alternative societies with different justice and care paradigms. When it became clear that the current space development is dominated by the conquest template, she felt disillusioned. “This seemed to me a real missed opportunity to carry the values and priorities we have on Earth into outer space,” she reflected.
While Rubenstein doesn’t expect immediate policy changes, she sees some promising paths forward. One could involve tightening environmental regulations for space activities; we’re only starting to understand the impact of rocket emissions and debris re-entry on the ozone layer we’ve worked hard to protect.
A more promising avenue is addressing space debris. With over 40,000 trackable objects orbiting Earth at speeds of 17,000 miles per hour, we risk reaching the Kessler effect—a collision scenario that could render orbit unusable for future launches. “Nobody wants that,” she asserts. “The U.S. government doesn’t want it. China doesn’t want it. The industry doesn’t want it.” Finding common ground on space debris is rare but crucial because “space garbage is bad for everybody.”
She’s currently working on a proposal for an annual conference that would bring together academics, NASA representatives, and industry leaders to discuss how to approach space in a “mindful, ethical, and collaborative” way.
Whether anyone will heed this call remains uncertain. There doesn’t seem to be much political will to unite on this issue. In fact, Congress introduced legislation last July to make the Wolf Amendment permanent, reinforcing restrictions on collaboration with China instead of easing them.
Meanwhile, startup founders are anticipating significant changes in space in the next five to ten years, companies are gearing up to mine asteroids and the moon, and Bruey’s prediction about working-class individuals in orbit lingers, unanswered.
